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Hello everyone, it's Luna (formerly known as Chintan). It's been just over a year and a half since I updated the Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder, and while the previous version seems to be working great, I think it's time for an update since we've had 19 new data points since then.

To use it make a copy ( File -> Make a copy ...), then enter your test spots and give it a few seconds to calculate.

Please do this even if you have an older version, because your old copy won't automatically update.

Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments.

The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact, if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them.

Updates:

List of Previously Observed hotspots updated - This is perhaps the biggest change. If you've used this tool before you may have noticed that the hotspots observed in previous months have a much higher probability. Hotspots tend to repeat, so if something was seen in a previous month, the hotspot is more likely to appear there again. There have been 12 newly observed locations in the 19 months since the last update, and all of these have been added to the spreadsheet. This means if one of those 12 locations turns out to be the hotspot again in the future (which will almost certainly happen at some point) you can nail it in fewer tries.

Elimination of 30 possible locations, reducing the list from 1282 to 1252 possible locations - This isn't as big a deal as you might think, because those 30 locations all had low probabilities anyway. But it's still nice to see the list get shorter and shorter. And it's a one way change. Once possible locations are gone, they are gone forever and the list can only shrink, never grow. Maybe one day we can get down to the minimum of 1056 possible locations. May 2019 might have been an annoying month because the location with 90.5% odds only gave 99%, and the actual hotspot was the one with 9.5% odds. But the good thing is, those low odds locations are the ones that eliminate possible hotspots. Since they are on the fringes of the probability distribution, they provider stronger data than the boring, routine ones in the middle of the distribution. The last time locations were eliminated was a whopping 26 months ago, back in March 2017, so it is a rare occurrence.

Update of probability distribution based on newest data - I calculate the probabilities using a Bayesian model, and adding new data updates the distribution. Having more data narrows the distribution, but you're unlikely to notice the difference. We have 117 months worth of data now, and I updated the probability distribution based on all that data.